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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
“There is, in addition, a second reason for doubting that scientists reject paradigms because confronted with anomalies or counterinstances. In developing it my argument will itself foreshadow another of this essay's main theses. The reasons for doubt sketched above were purely factual; they were, that is, themselves counterinstances to a prevalent epistemological theory. As such, if my present point is correct, they can at best help to create a crisis or, more accurately, to reinforce one that is already very much in existence. By themselves they cannot and will not falsify that philosophical theory, for its defenders will do what we have already seen scientists doing when confronted by anomaly. They will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict. Many of the relevant modifications and qualifications are, in fact, already in the literature. If, therefore, these epistemological counterinstances are to constitute more than a minor irritant, that will be because they help to permit the emergence of a new and different analysis of science within which they are no longer a source of trouble. Furthermore, if a typical pattern, which we shall later observe in scientific revolutions, is applicable here, these anomalies will then no longer seem to be simply facts. From within a new theory of scientific knowledge, they may instead seem very much like tautologies, statements of situations that could not conceivably have been otherwise.”
1 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edition Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970, pp. 77-78.
2 Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation." In C. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, New York, Free Press, 1965, pp. 248-249.
3 Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961, pp. 42-43.
4 Ibid.
5 Cf. Harold I. Brown, Perception, Theory and Commitment: The New Philosophy of Science, Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979, pp. 60-66 for further discussion.
6 Herbert Feigl, "Beyond Peaceful Coexistence." In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science V, ed. by R. Stuewer. Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1970, p. 9.
7 Ibid., p. 8.
8 Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, trans. by S. Drake Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1967, pp. 33-34, 97.
9 Owsei Temkin, Galenism, Ithaca, Cornell Univ. Press, 1973, p. 19.
10 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, "On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether," American Journal of Science 34, 1887, pp. 333-345.
11 Cf. Harold I. Brown, "Observation and the Foundations of Objectivity," The Monist 62, 1979, pp. 470-481, and Dudley Shapere, "The Concept of Observation in Science and Philosophy" forthcoming, for further discussion.
12 F. Reines and C.L. Cowan, "Detection of the Free Neutrino," Physical Review 92, 1953, pp. 830-831.
13 I will no longer be using the term ‘observation' in the restricted sense of the preceding discussion.
14 I will return to this issue in section E.
15 Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 10.
16 I am indebted to Prof. Thomas Nickles for helping me get clear on this point.
17 Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 182.
18 Ibid., p. 44.
19 Thomas S. Kuhn, Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1978.
20 The notion that pre-revolutionary periods may well be characterized by complacency rather than crisis was first suggested to me by Dr. Raymond Brock. It is discussed at length in Lewis Feuer, Einstein and the Generations of Science, New York, Basic Books, 1974.
21 Imre Lakatos, "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes." In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970, pp. 91-195.
22 Larry Laudan, Progress and its Problems, Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1977, pp. 78-81.
23 Ibid., p. 99.
24 Ibid., p. 78.
25 Harold I. Brown, "On Being Rational," American Philosophical Quarterly 15, 1978, pp. 241-248.
26 Cf. Brown, Perception, Theory and Commitment, pp. 129-131 for further discussion.
27 Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 55.
28 Cf. Harold I. Brown, "For a Modest Historicism," The Monist 60, 1977, pp. 540-555 for further discussion.
29 See Brown, Perception, Theory and Commitment Part I for further examples.
30 Cf. Harold I. Brown, "A Functional Analysis of Scientific Theories" Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 10, 1979, pp. 119-140.
